Charles Murray - Human Accomplishment and the Future of Liberty | The Lunar Society #10

1. 0:00 – 1:00

   Intro

   1. CMCharles Murray0:00

      I was not only convinced by that time that, um, religiosity was extremely important to the, particularly Christian religiosity, extremely important to Western civilization and what had gone on. Uh, I was also beginning to think that secular humanism didn't have the staying power that it needs.

   2. DPDwarkesh Patel0:26

      Hey folks, I hope you enjoy this interview. I just quickly wanted to say that this is a new and a small podcast, as you can see from the subscriber count below on YouTube. So I would really appreciate it if you could share this on social media and with your friends. Um, that, that kind of stuff is really helpful. So if you can subscribe on YouTube, if you can leave a review on iTunes, and especially if you can tell people about this podcast, it helps out a lot, especially at this stage in the channel. Um, and we got a lot of great interviews coming up. I think you're going to really like them, so just stay tuned and I hope you enjoy this interview.

2. 1:00 – 6:30

   Writing Human Accomplishment

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel1:00

      Charles Murray needs no introduction, so let's begin with Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences. I first want to ask you what motivated you to write this book?

   2. CMCharles Murray1:10

      Uh, well, a lot of times while I was writing it, I wondered that myself. Uh, it was an incredibly difficult book to write. The short answer is that back in the 1980s, mid-1980s, I read a book by Daniel Boorstin called The Discoverers, I think it was. And Boorstin, you know, when I picked it up I thought it was going to lay out this panorama of human accomplishment over the centuries, and it was really just a set of mini biographies of a lot of major scientists and so forth. And there, there wasn't anything wrong with that, but, but it's not what I wanted to read. I wanted to see the whole thing as a panorama. And as has been the case with other books I've written, (laughs) I had a book I wanted to read and the, the way to do that was to write it. And so I set off, uh, on writing this and it was a five-year task altogether. Very intense five years.

   3. DPDwarkesh Patel2:03

      Clearly. You can see that from the, uh, book itself. Um, I- I've always had this question when I read books like this that seem to integrate every single domain of human knowledge. H- How does a human being write a book like this? Like, how do you consolidate so much information and integrate in these new explanations?

   4. CMCharles Murray2:18

      Well, I don't do it the way a lot of people do. A lot people, a lot of people pretty much map out the book ahead of time and they know which chapters are going to follow which chapters and, and so they go ahead and do a lot of their research and then they start to write. Human Accomplishment was different for me because in one sense I couldn't start writing until I had done a lot of this, uh, historiometric research. People who have not read the book, uh, should know that I established inventories of events and inventories of people in the arts and sciences, and I use a technique that's quite well-established, it's been around for a long time, whereby you go to the index of a book and you count up, uh, the number of pages that, uh, th- uh, given person is referenced. And the logic behind it is this, that if you are writing a history of music, you are going to end up spending a lot more time on Beethoven than you do on Prokofiev. Uh, and the reason you're going to do it is to explain his music, Beethoven's music takes more time, and he, he looms larger in the story of music. The same thing goes with science, uh, th- that Einstein gets a lot of space, same thing goes with the arts. All right. So, so in order to accumulate inventories, and I have something like 16 or 18 of them, I have one for Western literature, uh, I have one for, uh, Indian literature too and for, uh, Indian philosophy and for Chinese art and, you know, I, I just had a whole bunch of separate inventories. Well, I spent two years basically doing nothing but going through these indexes of books and writing down the, the data. There was a book called, uh, you know, a set of books called The Dictionary of Scientific Biography. It's a wonderful resource in that it is supposed to be the definitive catalog of the important figures in, in science. Took me 17 10-hour days at the Hood College library, which is about 20 miles away from me, to do that one source. Uh, so in one sense I had to do an awful lot of research beforehand, but then when I started out, uh, I did what I always do, which is I get interested in some particular aspect and I dig into that. And I write. And then I go on to another topic and there's no particular rhyme or reason to it. It's very idiosyncratic. And (laughs) I, uh, for, for a while I have a lot of stuff in my head. So my wife would say as I was finishing Human Accomplishment that, "For a few shining moments there, you knew everything." (laughs) But then of course you start to forget it all, uh, immediately. That's wh- As I went back to the book today to remind myself, I found myself in the position of reading a passage and saying, "That's really interesting," because I'd completely forgotten that it was in there. (laughs) Anyway, I've, th- the answer is I go about this stuff very, very personally and the analogy that comes to mind is a guy who was a fine sculpture, uh, and he asked, "How do you do it? How do you make a sculpture of a, of a horse?" And he says, "You have this block of wood and you cut away everything that isn't a horse."

   5. DPDwarkesh Patel5:52

      (laughs)

   6. CMCharles Murray5:52

      And, uh, when I'm doing a book, I, I have this idea in my head of what it ought to look like, a very vague idea, and I cut away everything that doesn't look like what I hoped it would be.

   7. DPDwarkesh Patel6:02

      Mm. Did you write it, uh, one chapter at a time, or did you bounce around between them?

   8. CMCharles Murray6:07

      Uh, pretty much one chapter at a time because, uh, the th- one thing would lead to another. Th- for example, I've, I've realized that if I'm going to talk about, uh, this measure, this way of measuring stuff, uh, using the historiometric method, that I need to describe to my

3. 6:30 – 10:38

   The Lotka curve, age, and miracle years

   1. CMCharles Murray6:30

      readers what these distributions of things look like. And then I started to find out about the Lotka curve, whereby with great accomplishment, it is not a bell curve at all. It is a very, very left skewed curve. Here's, here's the example I ended up using, uh, in golf. In golf, you will have a lot of people who win one tournament, and the number of people who win two tournaments in professional golf just plunges. The number of people who win three, you're getting down towards the bottom. And when you get out to the greats, they are all by themselves at the end. That's true in almost every field of human excellence. Well, all of that was new to me. I didn't know that when I started writing the book, and it just was an obvious topic I had to take up. So I took it up, wrote it up, went on to the next chapter.

   2. DPDwarkesh Patel7:19

      Yeah. What, what I found most fascinating about that chapter on the Lotka curve is the inputs in those, uh, you know, wins, were actually bell curves, uh, whatever contributed to it.

   3. CMCharles Murray7:28

      Yeah.

   4. DPDwarkesh Patel7:28

      And the consequence was the Lotka curve.

   5. CMCharles Murray7:30

      Yeah.

   6. DPDwarkesh Patel7:30

      Um, I actually wanted to ask you about a related, um, phenomenon of just excellent performance by one individual, which is excellent performance by one individual in one year. The- there's a phenomenon of the annus mirabilis. It seems like Einstein had one in 1905, where he did special relativity and Brownian motion and the photoelectric effect in one year. Uh, Newton had one, uh, optics, gravity, motion, calculus.

   7. CMCharles Murray7:53

      Plague year.

   8. DPDwarkesh Patel7:54

      Huh?

   9. CMCharles Murray7:55

      It was the year he was ba- isolated because of the plague.

   10. DPDwarkesh Patel7:58

       Exactly, yeah. Makes us, makes me seem, uh, pretty lazy. Um, but what is behind, uh, not just the Lotka curve, but its consolidation in short intervals like this?

   11. CMCharles Murray8:10

       Part of it is if you are at a very productive part of your life, it spills over. And that productive part of your life is probably going to be... Well, if you're a hard scientist, uh, if you're a mathematician, then maybe in your 20s. All right. There are an awful lot of great mathematicians, and everything that they did that was important, they did by the age of 26, uh, because if you're operating at the far end of, of mathematics, you need every single neuron, you know, clicking at full, full force, and you start to lose them. And if you're into something like the soft sciences or policy, like I am, the nice thing is that you actually... First place, you don't need that many brain cells to be (laughs) a decent social scientist compared to being a mathematician. And, and also, though, judgment and experience works into it. So, whereas judgment and experience is of no help whatsoever to a mathematician, it's of great help if you're, if you're dealing with issues of history and public policy and so forth. So you can be in your 40s and 50s, but, uh, but it's... In my own case, (laughs) which I'm not comparing to Newton's, uh-

   12. DPDwarkesh Patel9:17

       (laughs) .

   13. CMCharles Murray9:17

       ... miraculous year, but in my, in my, uh, in, in my 40s, I was clearly doing my best stuff in terms of, uh, sort of a combination of, of use and experience. And that fits in with what they have found with age distributions. So age is one thing. It's very unlikely you're going to have a miraculous year in your 70s. Uh... Also, if you think about Newton and about Einstein and their miraculous years, the different things they were doing did feed into each other in, in a lot of ways. So you can see that if you had somebody at the peak of his powers, and he was dealing with one important thing which also required him to do another important thing, uh, or look at another important thing, you can see that there'd just be a burst there. Also, it's mysterious, and that's part of the answer. Uh, these things just come out of nowhere in some cases, and who knows how.

   14. DPDwarkesh Patel10:19

       L- let me ask you about, um, whether it, it... How mysterious are different patterns and habits of these, um, great accomplishment, the people who made these great accomplishments are? Or if there's some, uh, some consistency between their lives and their habits. Have you noticed that these are people just... uh, it d- it doesn't seem to have a rhyme or reason to the way they live their

4. 10:38 – 15:22

   Habits of the greats (hard work)

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel10:38

      lives, or...

   2. CMCharles Murray10:39

      They're all over the lot in terms of personality. You, you have lots of stories about the mad genius, and you have lots of people who are under the impression that when you get a really super high IQ, for example, you become pretty odd and don't have many per- interpersonal skills and so forth. That's actually an illusion. You notice the brilliant people who are also, also oddballs. You don't notice the people who are brilliant but, uh, but aren't oddballs. And so in music, you have the contrast between Beethoven and Bach. Uh, Beethoven, who was phenomenal, he's tied with Mozart in, uh, music inventory, not surprisingly. But he also acted as if he were God's gift to the world. In his case, he was right. He was God's gift.

   3. DPDwarkesh Patel11:32

      (laughs) Yeah.

   4. CMCharles Murray11:33

      But not very many people are, and he sort of set the standard of the artist genius who has no time for ordinary people, and, uh, don't get in his way because he has to express himself, okay? In his case, it was justified. Unfortunately, everybody who came after him thought, "Oh, well, this is the way you're supposed to act." Contrast that with Bach. Bach is number three, right after Mozart and Beethoven, and I have lots of people who say, "That's ridiculous. He should be number one. He created..."Not just spectacularly wonderful music, he created an incredible oeuvre of it. I mean, he was writing a cantata every week for the church, uh, in which he played. And, eh, he also sired something like 22 children. He was this German family man... with one woman- (laughs)

   5. DPDwarkesh Patel12:24

      (laughs)

   6. CMCharles Murray12:24

      ... with his wife.

   7. DPDwarkesh Patel12:24

      Wow.

   8. CMCharles Murray12:25

      And, and he was this Ger- this classic German burgher, you know, uh, uh, who, you know, very staid, looked like a, a, a p- prosperous German middle class person. He was a genius. So you've got... You, you've got all these ranges of, of personalities. Hard work is the common theme. Uh, you know, there's... There is no such thing as the person who was really great in their field who sort of did it with their left hand while they were... or waited for the muse. The, the thing that ties everybody together... I'm not the first person to observe this. Other historians who've, who've looked at genius have noted the same thing. Incredibly hard work over very long periods of time, their whole lives. Six, seven days a week, they... And that includes, by the way, Mozart. Mozart is, is one of the people that a lot of... He has a, the reputation of having tossed off these things, uh, while he was... Writing one piece of music while he was playing another. I mean, he... The stories about Mozart and his, his incredible facility with music are legendary. But he also worked fanatically hard. Uh, so are there any other common themes in these people? It's ver- I, I, I, I guess that... No, it's I'm thinking about art- uh, about, uh, literature and the great writers. And you have everything from the very staid, you know, Trollope writing his 2,500 words every morning, and then stopping and starting a new book the same day he finished the previous one. And then you had Tolstoy, (notification pinging) who was as weird as they, they get in his old age. They're, they're all, like, they're all over the lot. You can't, you can't say much as a generalization.

   9. DPDwarkesh Patel14:28

      Hmm. What do you think contributes to, um, the common narrative that these were people who were just... And i- it's, it's also true of, as well as Mozart, of Feynman, in physics, that this was just an incredibly playful person. He just, uh... Whenever curiosity struck him, he would just go there. Um, but in fact, when you look at his life, there, there's incredible amounts of hard work and, uh, tediousness. What do you think contributes to the narrative that it's not hard work, but just kind of innate skill compared with, uh, just, uh, uh, y- well, tepid curiosity?

   10. CMCharles Murray15:01

       Uh, I'm trying to think of... Well, first place, you'd have to give me an example of who did it that way, uh, so that I can react to it, because anybody that comes to mind did work really, really, really hard.

   11. DPDwarkesh Patel15:19

       Mm-hmm.

   12. CMCharles Murray15:20

       And, and

5. 15:22 – 19:57

   Focus and explore in your 20s

   1. CMCharles Murray15:22

      I have to say that this is one of the things that I think is way underrated right now, where, where there is a tendency for people to want to have a balanced life. And, uh, I'm always struck when I am talking to people your age. You're what? You're 20s?

   2. DPDwarkesh Patel15:41

      20.

   3. CMCharles Murray15:42

      You are 20? 2-0?

   4. DPDwarkesh Patel15:43

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   5. CMCharles Murray15:44

      Okay, I'm... And I'm th- thinking about when people are looking for jobs at, at the American Enterprise Institute or other places, and, and the people who are interviewing them come back and report to me and, and, you know, they say, "Uh, he's... This person's really worried about, uh, you know, the vacation days," and that are... They're going to be asked to work late and so forth. And part of what I go into in The Curmudgeon's Guide, which we may be talking about later, is you're 20 years old. What do you want a balanced life for?

   6. DPDwarkesh Patel16:17

      (laughs)

   7. CMCharles Murray16:18

      Uh, the, the... In your 20s is the time you should be going, you know, flat out in pursuit of what you love to do and finding out what you love to do, but you shouldn't be looking to have balance. And if you want to be at the top of your field... E.O. Wilson, the biologist, has a striking paragraph in this regard. He says, "If you want to be a top scientist," not a, not a, uh, just a good one, but a top scientist, "if you've got 40 hours a week that you will spend on your teaching and ordinary university duties, and then you will have another 15 hours that you will spend on this," he said, "and then you'll have another 15 hours you spend on that." And at the end of the paragraph, he's outlined basically an 80-hour week. And he said, "This is just sort of basic. You aren't going to get there from here unless you're willing to do that." And in my experience, that's the answer. The people who rise to the top work their asses off.

   8. DPDwarkesh Patel17:18

      Hmm.

   9. CMCharles Murray17:18

      And hardly anybody does.

   10. DPDwarkesh Patel17:21

       I was gonna ask you this when we talk about The Curmudgeon's Guide, but I'll bring it up now. Um, this seems to contradict your other advice of spending your 20s either in the military or in some far off country and place. Uh, should you focus in your 20s on your pursuit and vocation, or should you spend it, uh, doing these other things?

   11. CMCharles Murray17:37

       Well, I- y- you've caught me, in a way, in a contradiction there. I did say pursuing the thing you love and learning what you love. So in your 20s, what you don't want to do is to go directly to law school, above all else, from undergraduate. Actually, you don't want to go to graduate school at all, because you are 20 years old, 22 years old if you're graduating, perhaps. Uh, you've proved one thing in life, you're good in the classroom.That's your comfort zone. Not only, uh, have you proved already you can deal with that environment, it's quite possible that you have never dealt with any other environment in your life. You've gone to good elementary and secondary schools, you've gone to a good college. Uh, all your life, you've been this- one of the smart people. Um, you haven't the least idea what's out there in terms of- of the- the different options in life, and you've got to be proactive in jerking yourself away from your comfort zone. And the two best ways to do that are to go into the military if you're a new graduate, or for that matter, to get on an airplane with a one-way ticket, get off the other end and make a living in that strange country for a couple of years. Don't be a backpacker hanging out with the expats. Uh, get- get a job teaching English or tending bar or whatever, and get to know another really alien country. You can't go to London and Paris and do this. You can go to Bangladesh. You can go to Thailand the way I did. You can go to Nigeria. But you've got to- you've got to see what's out there before you can decide how you want to spend your life. Once you start- once you find something you want to do, that's the point at which you go into high gear in pursuing that.

   12. DPDwarkesh Patel19:31

       Mm-hmm.

   13. CMCharles Murray19:31

       Thank you for asking for that clarification.

   14. DPDwarkesh Patel19:34

       (laughs) Uh, well, let me ask about your time in Thailand, and we'll get back to human accomplishment- accomplishment eventually. Uh, but i- in Thailand, uh, other than contributing to your political sensibility as you explain it in Pursuit, um, how did it contribute in a way that you could not have gotten it, or I- i- in the- in an American town, or that it was especially efficient to get it in Thailand, in a different country?

6. 19:57 – 23:02

   Living in Thailand

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel19:57

   2. CMCharles Murray19:58

      Well, let me- let me illustrate it with- with the early days in Thailand. Um, I was assigned when I first got there to a town called Lampang, which is in the northern part of the country. And I didn't know it at the time, I was being assigned to one of the most wonderful assignments I'd get. It's just gorgeous up there. Uh, I was the only male ƒerang, foreigner, in the entire province except for an elderly French priest. Uh, and I had culture shock, just like the classic case. I was miserable. I would be walking down the street of Lampang and I would just be exhausted because I- I- I spoke the language sort of. They gave pretty good training in Peace Corps training, but the social cues, the social cues are such that if you walk down a street in the United States, you know what's going on around you. You walk down a street in rural Thailand, uh, th- uh, th- in your first t- days there, you haven't the least idea what's going on, and it's very tiring. And, uh, I, who prided myself on loving every kind of cuisine, didn't like Thai food. I did just as- the list went on. I was miserable. But I still remember the day maybe three months in, and I was in the back of a pickup truck and, uh, we were heading out to a village. We were doing- building wells and privies was- was the project. And, uh, the sun was rising and the mist was coming up over the paddies and, uh, the- I- I said, "You know, this isn't so bad." And- and I had- I had become comfortable in an environment where I had been utterly convinced I could never be comfortable and from an environment in which I eagerly sought to escape. Uh, but I couldn't without losing my pride, go home, but I really wanted to. Okay, so what's- what good is that? Subsequently, any time I've been thrown into a really strange environment, I've been able to look back on my own life experience and say, "That's okay. You can deal with this." Uh, and that's what I mean by having, uh, three years later, I was- I was taking time at six years altogether. But by three years later, I'd be going down a street in Bangkok and I was just absolutely cocky at that point. I understood everything that was going on around me. I was completely at home. And, uh, that kind of accomplishment translates, it generalizes. That's why I want people- more people to do it. Also, that's where I learned what I love to do. It turns out I love to play with data, to, uh, try to make sense of patterns in numbers. And I didn't know that when I went to Thailand. I did know it by the time I came back.

7. 23:02 – 26:02

   Peace, wealth, and golden ages

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel23:02

      Mm. Well, let's talk about the patterns then of human accomplishment and the causes of it. Um, y- you mention in the book that there are very few golden ages of human accomplishment in times of peace. Why do you think that is?

   2. CMCharles Murray23:17

      Partly it's an artifact because (laughs) the world has usually been at war, and thus, it's been much more common to have periods of war than periods of peace. Uh, well, I'm in danger here of speculating in a way that I didn't in the book as far as I can remember. It's possible that you have a relationship between a country that is s- fighting a certain kind of war, wars of expansion, wars of- of which where- which is part of a culture which is very vital and alive and aggressive and confident, which is the way that to- uh, you know, Toynbee characterizes a society on the rise. A- a civilization that is in the full flush of- of- of, uh, growing is also-... (laughs) Likened to be a not very good neighbor to, uh, to the countries around it. That goes under the category of speculation that you should not take to the bank, but there's probably some relationship.

   3. DPDwarkesh Patel24:25

      Mm-hmm. Um, and let's talk about wealth here. Um, you write in the book, uh, "Whether wealth was a direct cause of Florence's artistic accomplishments, or whether the wealth and the artistic accomplishments were both effects of some other cause is difficult to untangle." What would this other cause be?

   4. CMCharles Murray24:45

      (laughs) Here's where you're asking me a question I could have answered a lot better 15 years ago-

   5. DPDwarkesh Patel24:51

      (laughs)

   6. CMCharles Murray24:51

      ... when I was working on the book, than, than I can now. Um, human capital can't... L- here's, here's some things it can't be very easily. It can't be human capital because the human capital in Florence, uh, 50 years before the Renaissance was basically the same as the human capital in Florence, uh, during the Renaissance. Models make a huge difference, so that you get Socrates and... But Socrates begets Plato, and Plato begets Aristotle, and you've got great models. You have, you have in music, uh, uh, Bach and some of the other great, uh, composers of Baroque, and they established this very rich, uh, musical structure, theory of harmony that others could s- could, uh, feast on for the next 100 years. And that's true both in the sciences and in the arts. Uh, you have a great novelist in the country, that novelist inspires other novelists. That's an important feature. You've read the book more recently than I have, what else do I say is important?

8. 26:02 – 30:38

   East, west, and religion

   1. CMCharles Murray26:02

      Oh, there's the- the thing about purpose and autonomy, which, uh-

   2. DPDwarkesh Patel26:05

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CMCharles Murray26:06

      ... we haven't gone into, but... and here's where it's, uh, interesting to compare East Asia and Europe. Uh, and I say East Asia instead of South Asia because I don't know as much about South Asia as I know about East Asia, but I think probably a lot of what applies to East Asia applies to South Asia. You had in China this incredibly stable society throughout all the invasions and the Manchurians and this, that, and the other thing, is an incredibly long-lived civilization, and it functioned at a very high level for a very long time. Um, even though at the top in the politics, things were- were- were, uh, unsettled, they were extremely stable within the country. One of the costs of that is that people were more willing to subordinate their own interests to others in the family especially. The- the- the family, the family ties were very tight, and that was at a- that was in huge contrast to the West, to the modern West where individualism became very strong, and it was okay to walk away from your family and to devote yourself to your passion. When you have that kind of autonomy, you are more... you have better chance of pursuing excellence in a field. You aren't tied down in any way. And the other thing that the West had that East Asia did not have in the same form was a sense of purpose in life, and here I think Christianity's role in the West is just crucial. Uh, in a time of secularization, I don't think that the generations today studying history have any idea what it- what a huge cultural force Christianity was, uh, in the West and- and in Europe. And one of the- and one of the ways in which it, uh, it fostered so much accomplishment was not the Protestant Reformation, which played a role. I mean, the Protestant Reformation emphasized the individualism even more, but it goes back to Thomas Aquinas. And Thomas Aquinas said very powerfully in his theology, drawing a lot from it- from Aristotle as well as Christianity, that it is pleasing to God to have his creations understood, so that to explore the universe and the workings of the universe is- is, uh, is a way of expressing your love of God and God himself is- is enthusiastic about this. Contrast that with, uh, with Islam in its- certainly its earlier forms whereby it is bla- blasphemous to- to explore, um, mysteries of the universe. And at this point, whenever I start to talk about Islam, uh, then people say, "Yes, but you had the center of scientific development was in Baghdad and in the Middle East, uh, for centuries, and in sp- and in Spain when Spain was under, uh, uh, uh, Islam." And I do discuss that somewhat in, uh, in Human Accomplishment, the short story being that basically the theological leaders sort of looked the other way. But it was never- it was never enthusiastically embraced by the theology, and they just allowed a lot of, uh, more freedom at some points in history than they did at others. Uh, but it's a very different- it's a very different environment for fostering individual accomplishment. Uh, Islamic and Daoist and Buddhists...... outlooks on life versus Christian. And I'm not saying this in, as a believer in a religious tradition. I'm talking about its consequences culturally for certain kinds of accomplishment.

   4. DPDwarkesh Patel30:37

      Mm.

9. 30:38 – 34:44

   Christianity and the Enlightenment

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel30:38

      Um, so I mean, the Islamic Golden Age was only golden in comparison to the dark ages that Europe was going through. But then this adds a wrinkle to both of the arguments, uh, the one you were defending and the one that, uh, that, um, claims that Islam had a similar golden age, which is that, why did Europe have a dark age following, uh, the rise of Christianity that caused the fall of the Roman Empire or contributed to it? Um, wh- what took so long between that and the Enlightenment and, you know, the counter-narrative is, of course, that the Enlightenment resuscitated Europe from Christianity to promote fu- future excellence. What, what's wrong with this narrative?

   2. CMCharles Murray31:18

      I think you have to distinguish between two periods of Christianity. Christianity started out as a very communal, almost communistic, um, religion. People living together in common, sharing things in common, uh, and also it had put huge emphasis on the world to come and for centuries, and this is why you had, it was so popular to have hermits and monasteries and so forth. This life is the preparation for the next and it's unimportant in a way. And that's where Aquinas was so important because he flipped that and said, "No, um, using this life to accomplish these great things is pleasing to God." That was a huge change and it, it probably was a major factor in changing the cultural, um, setting for the Renaissance. Why did it last so long? Well, (laughs) Aquinas didn't come ar- a lot, arou- along until what? Now I used to know this. It's around the end of the first millennium, all right? So until then, you had a collapse of all sorts of civiliz- civilized, um, apparatus. The Roman roads, the aqueducts, the, the functioning cities. A lot of that went away, so you had a life that was very fragmented, very... Not many universities, except a few in, uh, Italy, and they were very r- rudimentary and they didn't come along until the Middle Ages. So there wasn't really any foundation on which to build. Uh, the universities started to fi- p- provide a little place to stand for some kinds of things to get started. You had specific inventions that had a huge effect. Why did you get this outpouring of art, great art in the 14th century? Oil paints made a difference. Oil paints made things possible that weren't possible before, but ma- mainly perspective. You know, three-dimensional, re- recreation of three-dimensional spaces on a two-dimensional canvas was a huge new thing on which people could build. And the other thing was the gradual development of the scientific method, which took a long time, but every step in that just opened up a new increment. So to start building that foundation and that as the foundation got built, it became easier to build upon that and you, you had the outpouring of the Renaissance. The Enlightenment did not rescue Europe from Christianity. Uh, (laughs) uh, I remind you, the Enlightenment didn't come along until the 18th century. An awful lot had happened before the 18th century. Things were really, you know, at, at a very high velocity at the time that the Enlightenment occurred. Um, I admire Steve Pinker. I think that his infatuation with the Enlightenment is a little overstated.

10. 34:44 – 37:43

    Institutional sclerosis

    1. CMCharles Murray34:44

    2. DPDwarkesh Patel34:44

       Mm. Uh, it occurred to me while you were talking, uh, that there's, there's an interesting pattern here that you talk about more in The Bite of People, which is, um, the institutional sclerosis is only evaded when there's something that just causes a downfall of everything that came before.

    3. CMCharles Murray35:00

       Yeah.

    4. DPDwarkesh Patel35:00

       Um, and it seems like that's what happened in Europe, where you had nothing to start off with and that just caused immense rates of accomplishment after.

    5. CMCharles Murray35:08

       For, for people who are not familiar with, uh, uh, institutional sclerosis, this is the contribution of Mancur Olson, an economist, uh, who wrote a couple of seminal books back in the 1960s and 70s, which said, "Look, what's, what happens with any society is that over time you have sclerotic institutions because it's like barnacles in a boat that slow it down." In the case of institutions, it is that special interests get things worked out to their advantage, where, uh, th- so they want to keep it that way, and then another special interest gets another, you know, twist in the law or whatever. And over time, you get hundreds of these, these, um, inefficiencies, these barriers that get put up. It's very, very hard to get rid of them. I'll, I'll give you the classic example, uh, is the sugar subsidy in the United States. That, um, we still have a subsidy for sugar farmers in the United States, which leads Americans into a situation where they're paying twice the world price for sugar. This benefits a very small number of sugar farmers. Why can't you get rid of it?... because you can't get the entire nation excited about paying twice the world price for sugar, but the sugar farmers are really, really excited about keeping their sugar subsidy. And so every time Congress tries to repeal it, you have this very effective powerful lobbying, uh, thing go into, uh- uh, uh, operation in- in Washington, and they manage to convince enough people to keep it that it never, never goes away. Okay, take the sugar subsidy, multiply that 500 times, 1,000 times, and you have institutions that really can't get much done. And does that remind you of any institutions in the United States today, such as the CDC and so forth? Um, and- and Mancur Olson said, "Well, there is one way, and that's to lose a total world war." (laughs) And so he- he contrasts the economic recovery of Japan and Germany with the economic recoveries of England and France after World War II, and he says, "What's the difference? Germany and Japan had no choice but to start over from scratch, and the French and the British were not required to do the same thing, and Germany and Japan just cruised right on past them, uh, within a few years."

11. 37:43 – 42:13

    Antonine Rome, decadence, and declining accomplishment

    1. CMCharles Murray37:43

    2. DPDwarkesh Patel37:43

       Hmm. Uh, this kind of sclerosis also sounds like not just contemporary US but also your account of Antonine Rome where you talk about, uh, civilization that had accomplished a great deal already but was now stagnant, sclerotic, secular. Am I reading too much into this-

    3. CMCharles Murray38:00

       No.

    4. DPDwarkesh Patel38:00

       ... or are you in part describing the US as it is today?

    5. CMCharles Murray38:04

       Yeah, uh, W- Ross Douthat, the New York Times columnist, wrote a book called, I guess the title is, The Decadent Society, and he's basically making the point that that's where we are now. And he- he makes the point as well that you can have a society that is decadent that is still a very pleasant place to live, and Rome in the Antonine period was still, at least if you had money, it was still a very pleasant place to live. Uh, and you can even have, um, certain kinds of accomplishment go on, but they tend to be more derivative and... Well, the- the case that, uh, the example that Ross Douthat gives is actually going to the Moon, which the United States did a long time ago, as opposed to having movies that spend vast sums of money in creating an utterly wonderful simulation of going to the Moon. Uh, th- that's- it's a- it's a real, you know, the genius of the, uh, the people who create these special effects is real. The artistry of what they do is real. It's a very different accomplishment from actually taking the Saturn V out on the launchpad and lighting that mother up and- and sending it to the Moon.

    6. DPDwarkesh Patel39:30

       Yeah, y- you're in an especially good position to talk about this because you wrote, um, with your wife, uh, the book on Apollo. Um, w- to what e- to what extent has the decline in the rate of accostum- accomplishment contributed to our society being decadent, or is it the other way around that because our society became decadent, the rate of accomplishment declined?

    7. CMCharles Murray39:51

       I think that it's, um, the decline in the rate of accomplishment is in the sciences partly a function of maybe inevitable decline in certain fields. So that anatomy used to be a scientific, uh, subfield that had a lot going on with it, lots of lear- There's nothing to learn about human anatomy anymore. Uh, contrast that with genetics where we are in a golden age and there's all sorts of things being discovered all the time. And so you have different fields at different stages of development. In the sciences s- there is a number of fields that are extremely well developed, and there's only so many fundamental discoveries that you can make. You know, once you- once you've discovered, uh, Newton's Laws, yeah, you can then get quantum mechanics, but it's getting harder and harder to have basic new discoveries of things that have already been done. So to some extent, you've got, in the sciences, uh, an inevitable decline. In the arts, it's a different thing. There is no reason why we still couldn't be composing great music in C major. Uh, there's no- it's not as if Beethoven and Brahms and, uh, Haydn and so forth wrote all the great music there was to be written there, but it's not gonna happen, and it's not going to happen because the cultural milieu is simply- is not gonna produce that kind of accomplishment. And similarly, you are not going to have certain kinds of great literature written anymore because, again, of the cultural milieu. The- the, uh, the kind of culture that produces, uh, the English novel of the 19th century requires a fundamentally different sensibility from the, uh, cultural milieu in which the writers of today live. So there is I think you've got a case that a- a society that has become decadent in some ways changes the milieu, which impedes artistic accomplishment.

    8. DPDwarkesh Patel42:12

       Hmm.

12. 42:13 – 45:40

    Crisis in social science

    1. DPDwarkesh Patel42:13

    2. CMCharles Murray42:13

       I'm not sure I can say the same thing about scientific accomplishment, but I could certainly say it about social science accomplishment, whereby what we are witnessing now in the social sciences is a collapse of the principles-... that my generation of social scientists grew up believing were absolutely inviolate, such as, "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Such as, um, that there's, that if there is science you don't agree with, the answer to that is to have better science that refutes the bad science. And the idea of safe spaces, of getting triggered, of being canceled because you say things which are factually true, but are hateful or whatever, that is a sign in the social science of not just decadence, but pervasive corruption.

    3. DPDwarkesh Patel43:15

       Mm-hmm.

    4. CMCharles Murray43:16

       That's a case of a culture having enormous effects not on the hard sciences, but on the soft sciences.

    5. DPDwarkesh Patel43:22

       Mm-hmm.

    6. CMCharles Murray43:25

       Although there are people working in the Google who will tell you that it's having effects on the hard sciences as well.

    7. DPDwarkesh Patel43:32

       Yeah. Um, I, I, and it's not only just a culture of responding to arguments, but of actually engaging and trying to understand what you disagree with in the first place.

    8. CMCharles Murray43:43

       Yeah.

    9. DPDwarkesh Patel43:43

       Um, you're, you're going through a, uh, an episode right now with Harvard, uh, uh, inviting you. There, you, um, you shared an op-ed from the Harvard Crinson, br- uh, Crimson, that explained why you shouldn't be invited, and it implied that you think that innocent people should be shot down, or that you don't think people are created equally in a moral sense. And the idea that anything you have ever written even implies anything like that is so absurd. It, it just does not engage with who you are as a person.

    10. CMCharles Murray44:13

        Well, this has been happening to so many people for so long. I mean, it was going on when The Bell Curve came out, and that was 26 years ago that The Bell Curve came out. It wasn't at the same level of vitriol. It wasn't at the same level of, uh, sort of completely quelling anybody standing up for academic freedom. At the time The Bell Curve came out, you still had people who said, "This is a legitimate scientific inquiry." Now, it's, it's, uh... I don't even think I'm the most egregious example of being misrepresented. What's even scarier is examples of people who have made factually accurate statements about something involving race or gender. Nobody is saying that the, the fact was wrong. They are saying that it shouldn't be said, that it's wrong to say it. Whereas in my case, they're saying that Dick Herrnstein and I said things in The Bell Curve we never said, um, or, uh, subsequent to Dick's death, that I've said things that I just simply never said, and the idea of White supremacy or that it's okay for certain people to die is just nutty. Yeah.

    11. DPDwarkesh Patel45:33

        Yeah. (laughs) Uh, I, I'm sorry to joke about it, but it, it's so absurd that you have to laugh at it.

    12. CMCharles Murray45:38

        No,

13. 45:40 – 55:00

    Can secular humanism win?

    1. CMCharles Murray45:40

       no, it's...

    2. DPDwarkesh Patel45:40

       I, I, I want to ask you, though, why do certain milieus contribute, e- are innately better at contributing to human accomplishment? Uh, you write in the book, "Devotion to a human cause, whether social justice, the environment, the search for truth, or abstract humanism, is by its nature less compelling than devotion to God." Now, you have people, as you mentioned, like Pinker, who have written books about how this narrative of human progress can promote, um, a, a future of growth in science and reason and everything good. Do you suspect that this narrative will not be strong enough to withstand the counter, the, the, the sort of counter enlightenment forces?

    3. CMCharles Murray46:20

       Yeah, um, I've, I have, I have undergone an evolution, by the way, uh, since, over the last 20 years, and I was kind of at the beginning of it when I finished Human Accomplishment in 2004, 2005, where I was not only convinced by that time that, um, religiosity was extremely important to the, particularly Christian religiosity, extremely important to Western civilization and what had gone on. Uh, I was also beginning to think that secular humanism didn't have the staying power that it needs. Um, and this is my, this is my question for s- the Steve Pinkers of the world. It... What is your ground for your moral beliefs? What, uh, what... That's, uh, a question that is very hard to answer if you do not think that they are in no way given by God. And by God, I don't mean a little old man sitting on a mountaintop in the clouds. I'm talking about a much more realistic concept of whatever a God, that God might be. But the notion that rape is wrong, murder is wrong, they all will always be wrong, they are irredeemably wrong, they can, th- they can never be justified as human... You know, the Ten Commandments, basically. Um, what is the basis for that belief? If it is the nature of the universe, that's one thing. If you're saying we have reached this through human ratiocination, that's a much weaker, um, a, a much, a much weaker force to prop it up when times get tough. And I think that in all sorts of ways right now, w-I hope you don't ask me for a lot of specific examples, 'cause I'm not sure I can give them. But you see people backing off of what used to be very firm moral principles because it's increasingly unpopular or inconvenient or unfashionable to believe them. And the examples of backing off the principles of moral and social science, of the search for truth, of the- the importance of the truth as trumping everything else, the importance of, um, civil discourse and all that. All sorts of things which you have professors who, 25 years ago, would have said, "This is the foundation, my moral foundation for the way I conduct my life and my profession," who now have backed away from that big time when it comes to their professional obligations. And I'm saying to myself, "Doesn't this also spill over into your- the firmness, the- the persistence of your moral principles in other ways?" Uh, so I think a secular society is not just that it's likely to be much less productive than- than the West was previously. Uh, I think that it has a false sense of security that it can never fall back into the bad old days of totalitarianism and barbarity of all kinds. We can fall back into the bad old days very easily.

    4. DPDwarkesh Patel50:19

       Mm. Uh, so, uh, um, uh, I could ask you s- um, philosophical questions about how, w- you know, which philosophy better grounds its morals, but let me ask you instead a practical question, which is, we do see declining rates of religious adherence in America and across the world. And it doesn't seem... I mean, it could be the case, but it doesn't seem like a huge resurgence of Christianity is coming anytime soon. If secular humanism isn't strong enough to stay in the face of these, um, other totalitarian trends, is there any sort of other philosophy that doesn't require Christianity, that is?

    5. CMCharles Murray51:01

       (coughs) Excuse me, I'm gonna have to cough for a second. (coughs) First place, don't write off Christianity quite yet, and don't- don't write off, uh, the other great religions, uh, quite yet either. I use the analogy, I think the first time I ever used it was in Human Accomplishment, uh, that the 20th century was kind of the adolescence of mankind, that the Enlightenment had delivered some body blows to some very old ways of looking at the world. You had the Enlightenment and the- the, uh, primacy of reason. Then you had Darwin, who, uh, dealt a body blow to the understanding of how the Biblical description of how the- the universe and the world were created. You had, uh, uh, relativism in all sorts of forms psychologically. You had the discovery of the subconscious and the unconscious. You had relativity and physics, which- which, uh, spills over into the way you look about it at objective truth and all sorts of other things. And I call it the adolescence, because I think intellectuals in the 20th century were sort of like adolescents who have decided their parents have made mistakes that they didn't- hadn't realized, their parents aren't perfect, and they decide their parents are wrong about everything. And the rejection of religion, I think, was of that order. So, it was not the case that in the 20th century, intellectuals carefully considered religion and rejected it. R- religion became something that nobody smart believed in that anymore. And, uh, th- that progressed throughout the century, so that by the time I went to Harvard in 1960, 1961, um, it was just taken for granted. It was in the air. If you're smart, you don't believe that stuff anymore. And the fact is that these are ultimate issues that human beings really want to grapple with, starting with the ultimate question, why is there something rather than nothing? Uh, and then going on into other questions about what are the foundations of human morality. Are we making all of this up? Is this all a matter of evolved tendencies that had survival value, uh, over the course of hundreds of millions of years of the evolution of species? Or is there something else at work? My sense is that there is a resurgence of interest in those questions. I have some friends who teach courses at places like Harvard, uh, that- that raise them, that are talking about religion specifically. They are jammed. Or if there is a public lecture on- on one of these issues, people are standing at the back of the hall. There is sort of a- a- I think a real, I don't know about the University of Texas, I suppose you have... The University of Texas, you probably have some kids who are straight from the Bible Belt and, um, uh, other kids who are your over-educated intellectuals who thinks it's all nonsense. Probably something in between. But- but certainly in the elite schools, I think that there is a real sense of here are all these important subjects we haven't been allowed to think about seriously. So, I am not... I'm kind of optimistic about, uh...... the resurgence of a more thoughtful way of thinking about religion. Whether that takes the form of, uh, Christianity as we've known in the past, I don't know. But I think-

    6. DPDwarkesh Patel54:52

       Mm-hmm.

    7. CMCharles Murray54:52

       ... its vitality is, is out there.

    8. DPDwarkesh Patel54:55

       Uh, but if I can express some skepticism about that optimism.

    9. CMCharles Murray54:58

       Sure.

    10. DPDwarkesh Patel54:59

        Uh, you

14. 55:00 – 1:03:30

    Future of Christianity

    1. DPDwarkesh Patel55:00

       yourself, uh, have in the past called yourself an agnostic, despite being convinced of the historical role of Christianity in promoting human accomplishment. And you, you... I, I, I don't see how, even if I did agree with the arguments that Christianity was and continues to be uniquely powerful for, um, you know, promoting a free society, I, I don't see how I could bring myself to agreeing with the actual theological basis of Christianity. Uh, how, how do you reconcile the fact that you yourself are an, agnostic with the idea that in the future other people who aren't even convinced of the value of Christianity will turn to Christianity?

    2. CMCharles Murray55:40

       I suppose, the simple answer is I'm becoming a closeted believer. But, uh-

    3. DPDwarkesh Patel55:43

       (laughs)

    4. CMCharles Murray55:44

       But apart from that, uh, I, I'd say don't give up on a thoughtful consideration of these issues, and you don't have to do it in a Christian framework. Um, you can do it in a variety of frameworks. It would be... One of the things I did not realize until I... Uh, just a little background here is that my wife is, uh, is a, a Quaker, a Quaker by convincement. She came to this as an adult as well. She was like me, she was an agnostic in college and so forth. And, um, (laughs) I'm... Through her, I've been exposed to a lot of really brilliant writing about a lot of really difficult issues that, that doesn't require you to, um, read, uh, chapters about the resurrection or things like that. But they're talking about broader theo- theological issues, and sometimes not even in a Christian framework at all. And the, the thing about this literature is that it's really smart, it's, it's really subtle and thoughtful and smart, and so you ought to expose yourself to that. And th- then I can't give you a reading list right now, but I think it would be perfect to, to pick up readings in a variety of traditions that are the, sort of the best that has been said in thought in each of those traditions. Just so that you can be sure that when you reject religion, you are doing it on the basis, basis not of saying, "I don't believe Bible stories anymore," uh, or whatever the equivalent is in Buddhism and Islam, and the rest of that. It is you are saying, "No, I, I have given consideration to the reasons why some very thoughtful, smart people do believe this, and, uh, with respect, I simply disagree with them now." You've got to give yourself the basis for coming to that conclusion.

    5. DPDwarkesh Patel57:42

       Yeah.

    6. CMCharles Murray57:43

       I predict that if you expose yourself to a fair amount of that material, you will have planted a different sensibility that will do you good in, in years to come.

    7. DPDwarkesh Patel57:58

       Mm-hmm. And I should say you have, um, you have given a reading list in The Curmudgeon's Guide, uh, of such literature.

    8. CMCharles Murray58:05

       I think it is.

    9. DPDwarkesh Patel58:07

       Um, yeah. And I, I'm not sure if you're familiar with, uh, Jordan Peterson, when he was doing his tour explaining his version of what he thinks God is and how that relates to Christian theology.

    10. CMCharles Murray58:19

        I have, have not, no. have not seen it.

    11. DPDwarkesh Patel58:22

        Okay. Um, well, do you suspect that if Christianity were to resurge, it would be through somebody who isn't, isn't bringing back the old, uh, version of theology that required, you know, beliefs in actual metaphysical, um, existence of God, but something like Jordan Peterson where it's not clear what he believes, but it is motivating enough? There's, there, there does seem to be a purpose and some transcendental good that is being promoted.

    12. CMCharles Murray58:49

        Well, again, since I don't know directly what he's said, I can't comment on it. I can, I can describe my own sense. Um, well, of... Just a couple of observations, one is that I have a much greater sense of mystery than I used to have about the universe, and I don't think that's made up. I think that contemplating all sorts of things that we see around us and, you know, that, that all it wants to say that, ah, everything that can be known, can be known by the human minds, that becomes a little more implausible. Because let's stipulate that there is a God, it is absolutely impossible for us to avoid anthropomorphizing that God. Uh, we, we, we have to think in terms of the frame of reference that we have and a God that lives outside of time, outside of history, that permeates everything, is not possible for us to understand. Uh, we are... If, if there is a God, we are like my dog trying to figure out what I'm doing when I'm running a regression equation. Okay? The dog can look at me and he can try to, try to relate that to something he can understand, he hasn't the slightest idea. And similarly when people say, "Well, how can there be a God? Because if there were a God, they would never allow all this suffering." I mean, that's sort of the level of, of just a lack of appreciation for the intellectual challenge of trying to get your head around some of these questions.There, I will also make one other observation, and this comes through my wife and, and the people I have been exposed to, uh, over the years through her. I think that, that there is, in religion, uh, something equivalent to being tone-deaf. Um, some people cannot hear a melody. It doesn't mean the melody doesn't exist. It means that they are impaired in, in trying to hear that. Some people are color-blind. It doesn't mean color doesn't exist. It means that they can't see it. I think there are differences in human beings in their ability to, um, sense other ways of knowing besides the hyper-rational ways in which I try to know things, and I have become convinced it is not that they're making stuff up, it is that they aren't making it up, and the fact I can't see it is because I'm the equivalent of tone-deaf or color-blind. Uh, and it's not my fault, but it is incumbent on me to do the best I can to understand what the melody is like and understand what the color red is like.

    13. DPDwarkesh Patel1:02:02

        Mm-hmm. I, uh, I, I suspect this might be the, or you get hubris and naivety of my youth, but I have read C.S. Lewis and a few other people, and obviously I haven't engaged with the literature in any serious way, but it seems to me when statements like God is beyond time and place are made, it, they're not even wrong. I, I'm not even sure what is being said. But, like you said, it might be just me not understanding the way in which it's being said.

    14. CMCharles Murray1:02:27

        On the other hand, if you start with the stipulated truth that there is a God, then in what sense would that God be time-bound or space-bound?

    15. DPDwarkesh Patel1:02:43

        Yeah. But what does it mean to not be time-bound?

    16. CMCharles Murray1:02:47

        (laughs) That's... Remember when I said it's hard to get your head around this stuff? That's exactly what I mean.

    17. DPDwarkesh Patel1:02:52

        Yeah, yeah.

    18. CMCharles Murray1:02:52

        Exactly, yeah.

    19. DPDwarkesh Patel1:02:53

        Uh, I, I, I will go back and, um, try to educate myself on this topic.

    20. CMCharles Murray1:02:57

        Although, reading C.S. Lewis is better than nothing. I mean, I'm glad you've read C.S. Lewis. Uh, he's, he's, he's... Did you find him interesting?

    21. DPDwarkesh Patel1:03:04

        I did, and it was actually in the context of a debate I was having with a friend in high school, and she convinced me to read... Uh, uh, I was making the same arguments about The Prob- uh, The Problem of Evil, and she convinced me to read one of those books. Um, and I... I mean, he has a way, he has a prose that's really captivating, but I, I just didn't find the arguments that persuasive.

    22. CMCharles Murray1:03:23

        Okay, well-

    23. DPDwarkesh Patel1:03:24

        Um...

    24. CMCharles Murray1:03:24

        ... you've exposed yourself.

    25. DPDwarkesh Patel1:03:26

        Yeah, I'll expose myself some more on your recommendation. Um,

15. 1:03:30 – 1:06:08

    Liberty and accomplishment

    1. DPDwarkesh Patel1:03:30

       but let, let me ask you now about the link between liberty and human accomplishment. Um, Ch- China not only, of course, had the differences in worldview and milieu that contributed to, um, lower purpose and then autonomy, but i- it was, to go to some, uh, more, uh, physical differences, it had, it was easier to govern geographically than Europe. Maybe that contributed to the fact that it was also easier to thwart innovation and new ideas. Um, and now we're coming in a time when, as you're describing By the People, there's just a tremendous burden on the average individual from the government. To what extent do you suspect that this has dampened the rate of human accomplishment?

    2. CMCharles Murray1:04:12

       You know, uh, uh, in working on Human Accomplishment, I had to come to grips with the fact that so much... Basically, liberty as conceived by the founders, uh, by Locke and the 19- 18th century tradition, is very young. It's very new, and all of this vast array of human accomplishment that I'm writing about came before that. So, I had to sort of accept to myself that you don't have to live in a libertarian world in order for great things to happen because they've happened in the past. But I reconciled that to some degree by saying that the people who accomplished those great things had a lot of de facto liberty, so that they might have been living under an absolute monarchy, uh, they might have been... In fact, they might have been living in France where, which was much more, uh, authoritarian than Britain was. But, um, you could still, if you were one of the French intellectuals, be given a lot of personal freedom to go ahead and pursue, uh, what you wanted to pursue, and that was true elsewhere in Europe as well. Having said that, there's got to be a link between the freedom to do what you feel this passion to do and being able to do it. I mean, it's just simply got to be... It's, you've got to have, uh, more potential for great human accomplishment when, in some ways, you have created de facto freedom for people to pursue it. And if you're going to have de facto freedom for a few, this is the point at which I become a good Constitutional Madisonian and say the great thing about the United States was... The United States said it was everybody's should have that freedom, not just the people that, uh, the state will leave alone.

    3. DPDwarkesh Patel1:06:07

       Mm-hmm.

16. 1:06:08 – 1:11:17

    By the People

    1. DPDwarkesh Patel1:06:08

       Um, so, so let's talk about your plan then, about, uh, setting up these various defense funds to create this de facto autonomy.

    2. CMCharles Murray1:06:16

       Okay, this is a book that, uh, hardly anybody who's listening to us will have read. It's called By the People, and it spends the first four chapters detailing all the ways in which this society is becoming moribund in terms of the Constitution, which is now bears no resemblance to the Constitution as it existed up until about 1937, uh, to the sclerosis in the, uh, Federal Government, um-Here's, I'll just give people a- a quick sense of how much things have changed. In 1960, hardly any corporations even had an office in Washington, D.C. Maybe the airlines did 'cause they were regulated, and the trains. But most American corporations, Washington just wasn't important. Now, not only does every corporation have a major presence in Washington, both directly and in employing lawyers and lobbyists and all the rest of that, um, they run their businesses in large part by trying to get a competitive advantage the way a regulation is written or a piece of legislation that's passed, uh, whereby the state is, uh, providing them with, uh, an edge over their competition, just i- in complete opposition to what the free market economy is supposed to be like. Then you've got the regulatory burdens, which are the main focus of By The People, whereby I'm not worried about JPMorgan and all the regulations that have been foisted on it by, uh, uh, by the post, uh, 2008, uh, recession. JPMorgan can afford to have, you know, 500 lawyers jumping through all the hoops the government wants it to jump through, and in fact, by the way, since I'm mentioning JPMorgan, it is, uh, the CEO of- of, uh, Chase, uh, who said that it gives us a bigger moat, referring to the legislative regulatory- legislation. It- it gives them a better protection against competition. I'm worried about the guy who wants to open up a corner store and can't open up a corner store because of all the regulatory hoops he has to go through. Uh, I'm- I'm worried about the person who a bureaucrat can come to them and say, "Oh, you're in violation of such and such, and if you try to fight this, I'll put you out of business because, uh- uh, you can't- you can't resist the amount of pressure we can bring on you." And so I suggested, why not have legal defense funds for systematic civil disobedience? And the proposition is, federal government cannot possibly enforce these tens of thousands of regulations that it has piled up. Can't possibly do it. They can only get away with all that if people voluntarily comply, even with idiotic regulations. And so why don't we not comply with idiotic regulations? Let's go ahead and run our business the way w- it should be run, and then if the government comes after us, uh, we have defense funds, perhaps funded by the profession, perha- perhaps funded by philanthropists, which say to the government, "We're gonna fight this, and we understand that we are technically in violation of this stupid regulation and that sooner or later you'll probably win, but you're gonna have to invest a lot of resources in this. You're gonna have to invest the time of your- your staff and your lawyers and the rest of that. Do you really want to do that?" And I think that you have the potential in this for getting the entire federal government to behave the way that the Highway Patrol does.

    3. DPDwarkesh Patel1:10:16

       Hmm.

    4. CMCharles Murray1:10:17

       Which is, you know, I don't know about the part of the country you live in. (laughs) Texas is, okay, Texas, you can still do lots of things in Texas, but in the part of the country I live in, which is Maryland, the speed limit is 65 and you go 75 and you're fine because, uh, on the major highways, 75 is kind of the flow of traffic and those highways were designed for those speeds and they don't stop you. We're violating the law, there's no way the cops can start picking up everybody and, uh, and- and so why not have a regulatory, de facto regulatory regime in which we have discouraged the government from enforcing the stupid regulations and encouraged it to, uh, to focus on the- the important ones? And I have more specific suggestions for how- how to do that, but that's- that's the- that's the premise for developing the- the, uh, defense funds.

    5. DPDwarkesh Patel1:11:16

       Um,

17. 1:11:17 – 1:14:49

    American exceptionalism

    1. DPDwarkesh Patel1:11:17

       I- I- th- it's a fascinating idea and I wanna ask you first about w- the circumstances which make... I- it is a radical proposal and the circumstances which make civil disobedience, uh, seem necessary, and part of it goes back to if we lose or if we continue losing the sort of, um, liberty sensibility that America has had, that a unique way of life will be surrendered. Can you describe what it was about the American founding that made it unique in charting a nation that w- was cons- uh, that prioritized maximizing the liberty of its citizens? Why has this not happened in other places and in other times?

    2. CMCharles Murray1:11:56

       The British made progress toward it, so that at the time of the founding, you- uh, you already had a lot of- of, um, de facto freedom there, and you had a certain amount of constitutional freedom even though they had an unwritten constitution but coming out of the common law. But you also had an- that encumbered with an aristocracy, you had that encumbered with all sorts of class lines and so forth. And the- the genius of the Americans was that it said that all people should be free to pursue happiness, and that all people are capable of pursuing happiness. Uh, that was a break with history. No other government had ever been established (notification sound) on the premise that...The individual human being should be allowed to live his life as he sees fit, as long as he accords the same freedom to everyone else. Uh, nothing else remotely like that had happened, and subsequently, in subsequent revolutions, including the French Revolution, it didn't happen again. The- the United States was the only- the only one which- which had, uh, a not only a statement of the freedom of people to pursue their own happiness, they set up the government with explicit tortuous ways of constraining that government from ever, uh, sliding down the slippery slope into an ordinary authoritarian government. Now, the fact that it lasted... Two- two comments about that, uh, because I know the reaction out there. "But they were slaveholders. You had- you had, uh, this large chunk of the American population that was enslaved." It was the fatal flaw in the founding. It sort of guaranteed that it would collapse eventually, uh, because the evil was so great, you can't- you could not have this- this expression of how human beings should be allowed to live in contradiction to this reality of slavery. Uh, that was just never going to last forever. But it was kind of amazing it lasted as long as it did. Uh, the... So, that you had, from 1789 when the Constitution was passed to, uh, 1937, the federal government was still incredibly highly constrained from interfering with the lives of its citizens. Uh, and that's not a bad track record, uh, for, uh- for such an ambitious experiment.

    3. DPDwarkesh Patel1:14:47

       Hmm. What-

18. 1:14:49 – 1:18:43

    Pessimism about reform

    1. DPDwarkesh Patel1:14:49

       what is the cause of your pessimism that this basic idea, um, w- will not originate again, uh, th- of, you know, founding a nation based on this kind of charter?

    2. CMCharles Murray1:15:06

       Well, I'm hesitating because I have been so surprised by the last four years. Um, in, uh, th- the- the answer I would have given you in 2012 when I was writing Coming Apart was that we have reached a modus vivendi whereby the elites have, uh, established a society that really works just fine for them, but they are passing o- off enough benefits to the rest that you sort of buy them off. And you aren't going to have any principled demands for "get the government off our back," uh, because the working class, which in the past was so central to- to this, uh, the strength of the American experiment, uh, has essentially been going down the tubes in terms of its own commitment to this way of life. And so, I- I saw in 2012 the antagonism toward the elites that existed even then. I didn't... I way underestimated the depth of the anger, the breadth of the anger, um, that produced Trump. And in one sense, that seems to indicate a potential for the resuscitation of an older way of looking at how American society should function. But the last four years have also been a case where what was formally known as the right has proved itself to be every bit as authoritarian in its o- own way as the left is, and just as willing to engage in all sorts of practices which, uh, in... you know, would ordinarily be considered an- just antithetical to a conservative perspective in the world, let alone a libertarian perspective in the world. So, we are now in a situation where there's way more energy in the middle class and the working class for radical change than I ever would have suspected existed. I'm not happy about the kind of radical change that they're in favor of too. Basically, at this moment in history, as I reach my 77th year, no, I'm in my 78th year, um, a movement that I thought had enormous vitality and potential just 10 years ago, namely a- a- a practical libertarian form of politics. Practical libertarian means small L libertarian, really. It's Madisonian. Uh, I'm really thinking about Madison's conception of the role of government. Uh, whereas I thought that really had a chance of regathering some strength, uh, I'm an oddball now. What... um, um, all sorts of people on the right now think people like me are cucks. We're... you know, we're useless. They- they're going to go beyond that. So basically, if- if you can give me any reason not to be pessimistic, I will grasp at it.

    3. DPDwarkesh Patel1:18:34

       Yeah. Uh, I- I don't think that-

    4. CMCharles Murray1:18:37

       Uh, so strategically, I think there's a certain degree of optimism, but not tactically, not within the next, uh, couple of decades.

19. 1:18:43 – 1:25:18

    Can libertarianism be resuscitated?

    1. CMCharles Murray1:18:44

    2. DPDwarkesh Patel1:18:44

       D- do you think that the, um, coalition that Trump assembled could be recaptured to a more libertarian sensibility? Because right now, you have...... of what could be seen as the, um, voice of that coalition on TV, Tucker Carlson, sometimes using the word libertarian as an epithet. Um, you have the Tea Party's, uh, wing in the Congress, the Freedom Caucus, being the strongest supporters of, of Trump and higher deficits and whatever else. Can this movement be re-, reconsolidated with a more libertarian sensibility?

    3. CMCharles Murray1:19:17

       (inhales) Gee, if Tucker Carlson just could channel his former self, uh, uh, uh, he would have a potential for being a very effective political figure. And by getting in touch with his former self... I'll, I'll tell you my reaction as I listen to Tucker, which I don't do very often, but I used to know, you know, I used to know Tucker. Uh, not close friends, but knew him and admired his work. And sometimes when I have listened to him in recent years, I still agree with him, and he is saying things with passion which, which needed to be said. And in a way, Tucker has had the same kind of, uh, experience I've had, where I've, I've decided I was way too cavalier about low-scale immigration. The, you know, the economists say, "Hey, low-scale immigration is a net win-win, and they're not taking away jobs from, uh, from Americans," and all the rest of that. And I just bought into that too glibly and didn't think hard enough about how it feels not to be an economist going through the numbers and saying, "Hey, it's a win-win," and instead being a carpenter who used to get $19 an hour, and I've been undercut, uh, by, uh, low-scale immigrants who were working for $12 an hour with no benefits and no Social Security and all that. And, and I, I'm saying, how would I feel if I were in that situation? I would be angry as could be, uh, if I were in that situation. And so, I think Tucker has hold of some, some, uh, growth that he has done, where he has augmented his former positions, which I was very close to, about liberty, with some other truths that need to be taken into account. What's happened is, though, you're right, he uses libertarian as an epithet and, uh, he has gone too far in defending the indefensible with a lot of-

    4. DPDwarkesh Patel1:21:17

       Mm-hmm.

    5. CMCharles Murray1:21:18

       ... the things that Trump has done. Uh, but I would like to think that when, uh, Trump is gone, uh, which I assume will happen after this election, could be wrong, that, um, you might have people like him who have a synthesis of some aspects of the populism that deserve to be part of the synthesis, but a core that goes back to individual freedom and limited government. And the, the, the, the one thing that you can be too dismissive of when you're being a pessimist like me, is that you discount the effect that an individual can have. So, if you had a Ronald Reagan type of personality, or an FDR kind of personality that were, were, uh, uh, holding these views this time, that person could be a success- successful politician. Problem is you can't manufacture that kind of person. So, I don't know if one's gonna come along.

    6. DPDwarkesh Patel1:22:19

       Hmm. But you have manufactured for them, I think, uh, a worldview that w- would be incredibly helpful in sh- shaping their policy agenda and their communication. Uh, you, I, I think you could be analogous to what Hayek was to Ronald Reagan, uh, to whoever comes in the future. But do you have, in that position, advice for people who want to preserve a remnant of the libertarian sensibility, e- and mold the- this worldview f- in a way that could be applicable and persuasive to current and future circumstances?

    7. CMCharles Murray1:22:51

       Do I have... Let me go back to the beginning of your question. Do I have any ideas about what? About-

    8. DPDwarkesh Patel1:22:57

       Advice for, uh, keeping-

    9. CMCharles Murray1:22:59

       Oh, advice.

    10. DPDwarkesh Patel1:22:59

        ... this remnant.

    11. CMCharles Murray1:23:03

        I guess at this point, I'd hunker down and wait for the storm to pass. Now, you're 20 years old, so you're gonna be hunkering down for a while anyway, just as a matter of, uh, biographical necessity, in the sense of-

    12. DPDwarkesh Patel1:23:20

        Yeah.

    13. CMCharles Murray1:23:20

        ... I certainly hope you don't hit your peak at the age of 23 or 24. That would be a disaster. Um, but suppose I were 30 years old, 35 years old, and interested in, in being engaged in this sort of thing again. I think I'd just accept that probably not much that I want to do is gonna be possible to do for a while. And that you could po- possibly do something like you could join a think tank, you could, you could run for office at local levels, um, campaigning on your principles and probably get elected. But you're not going to, to be in a position to run against the milieu in a big way. The milieu is really strong and the mi- and the, and it's really hostile to, to the kinds of things that I think and you probably think right now. And to s- sit back and wait for things to be less hostile, I guess, is what I would do.

    14. DPDwarkesh Patel1:24:30

        Hmm. Um-

    15. CMCharles Murray1:24:31

        I don't have time to sit back and wait for things to get less hostile, but...

    16. DPDwarkesh Patel1:24:35

        (laughs) I have all the time in the world. Um, I, I want to ask you about the methods of this civil disobedience. What has come of the Madison Fund since you wrote this book?

    17. CMCharles Murray1:24:47

        Nothing. Uh, what, what happened is the, uh, there were some people who were interested in starting one, but remember the book came out, I think, in 2014 or '15.And it hadn't been out very long until we were in the 2016 election cycle, and, uh, all of this kind of stuff just, uh, nobody was paying any attention at all to it anymore.

    18. DPDwarkesh Patel1:25:14

        Mm. Um, you expect your skepticism

20. 1:25:18 – 1:28:11

    Trump's deregulation and judicial nominations

    1. DPDwarkesh Patel1:25:18

       that these issues could be resolved through the political process, but somebody who's trying to make their case for Trump might say, he has done some amount of deregulation. We're about to have six to three conservative majority on the court. To what extent has the political system been able to solve these issues?

    2. CMCharles Murray1:25:37

       Well, I wish I knew what the story was with regard to deregulation. I've heard people say that there have really been some quite significant things that have been done. Uh, I've also heard that actually, there's more smoke than fire there. Uh, but, but are, is it, are we better off with regard to the regulatory regime than we were four years ago? The answer is probably yes. A six to three majority on the Supreme Court, does that make it conceivable that, that the court would, uh, modify what's called Chevron deference? And, um, sorry to introduce the legal jargon, but Chevron deference comes from a case involving the Chevron Company. And the Supreme Court held then, and by the way, Antonin Scalia was in favor of this. The, the government, the Supreme Court has said that, um, the court should defer to what the regulatory agency has said in its regulation in cases where there is any doubt whatsoever. In other words, the court is not gonna try to second guess the regulators. Well, I sympathize with the notion that the courts should not try to become expert in these very arcane issues that a lot of regulations involve. But there should be some modification of that, whereby if the administration of this regulation is clearly obviously idiotic, translating that into some more acceptable legal language, the court ought to be able to overthrow regulations, uh, without having to get into the minutiae of all the technical things that, that led to Chevron deference. Well, if that were overturned, what you would basically be, be, uh, doing is putting a rein on the regulatory state, which it has not experienced, uh, for the last 23 years, at least.

    3. DPDwarkesh Patel1:27:36

       Mm-hmm.

    4. CMCharles Murray1:27:36

       So, is that possible, the six to three court? I guess it's not impossible, and that's better than nothing.

    5. DPDwarkesh Patel1:27:43

       (laughs) Uh, I, I, if, if that doesn't happen, and we have to stay with this bizarre system of regulations we have... And by, by the way, that first part of that was such a, it was a great description, but it was incredibly frustrating to read, that you have this e- everything, uh, if you want to appeal the regulation that the regulators are imposing on you, you have to go to the regulators themselves.

21. 1:28:11 – 1:32:05

    Beating the federal government

    1. DPDwarkesh Patel1:28:11

       Um, but if you were trying to battle them in this sort of legal war of attrition with the Madison Fund, people will say, "How do you expect to beat the federal government? What kind of resources could you possibly assemble that would be enough to combat their resources?"

    2. CMCharles Murray1:28:26

       Oh, it's, it's much easier than people think, because you just take a look at the budget of, let's say, uh, the, uh, regulatory agency for workplaces. Um, I'm blocking on the name of it right now. Um, they are responsible for regulating every workplace in the country and enforcing regulations on, and you're talking about thousands of regulations. And they don't have that many inspectors. So you will have companies that won't get inspected, particularly small companies, won't get inspected for years at a time. And th- they... At, at the level of the... Let me back up. They, they have taken on so much regulatory responsibility that there's no way that they can staff up to respond to that. And when you appeal, or let's say that you have, let's say that you have knowingly violated a regulation. They've come, and they want to fine you for it. And you say, "Okay, we're gonna fight, fight that." You are not fighting the entire federal government. You're fighting the local office of that government agency, which has maybe, what, 10, 20 people in it, max? And you have bureaucrats who are not that eager to, to get deluged with a lot of work that they can avoid. And you are saying to a specific bureaucrat who is, wants to bring you to book for this violation, "Uh, okay. Uh, how do you feel about spending 100 hours, 150 hours this next month dealing with all this stuff I'm gonna load onto you?" Because one of the things about the regulatory state, which is you can... You don't have to prove things. (laughs) You just, you can set things in motion which will cause an enormous amount of work just to deal with the, the, the process that you've set in motion. And that's what the lawyers would be doing for the Madison Fund. The lawyers for the Madison Fund would be saying, "You know what? We're just gonna take this intricate legal system that you have developed, and we are going to exploit it. Um, not with an eye to getting justice, but with an eye to making life difficult for you. And guess what? We can do that." So you're dealing with individual human beings who are given a choice, "Do I want to pursue this, or should, maybe I'd pick on an easier target?" And a lot of them are just going to pick an easier target.

    3. DPDwarkesh Patel1:30:52

       Hm.

    4. CMCharles Murray1:30:53

       Particularly if they know I- By the way, here's what Donald Trump has shown us. Donald Trump got a reputation for litigating anything. (laughs) And so when, when he said to the subcontractors that he stiffs...You know about this practice of Donald Trump's?

    5. DPDwarkesh Patel1:31:12

       Yeah.

    6. CMCharles Murray1:31:12

       But when he, when he had subcontractors, you know, who hav- who were supposed to do the plumbing or whatever in one of the buildings, and when they're done, he says, "Oh, well, you didn't do the work correctly. I'm just going to pay you three quarters of what, uh, the contract says." And when they say, "We're going to fight this," Trump would say, "You fight this, and we will keep you in court forever." And he'd make good on it. And so he actually could make that into a business model whereby he could systematically underpay his subcontractors, because he'd established the threat of, that makes it not worth their while. Now, why people still did subcontracting work with him, I don't know. That's another question. But, uh, th- the fact is, you can just th- A, a credible threat of litigation in defense of, against the regulatory state could have an enormous impact.

    7. DPDwarkesh Patel1:32:00

       Hmm. I actually didn't know about that. Uh, that's astonishing. Um, but, uh,

22. 1:32:05 – 1:34:05

    Why don't big companies have a litigation fund?

    1. DPDwarkesh Patel1:32:05

       my, I was telling one of my friends about this idea, and he said, "If this strategy could work, you would be expecting big corporations to be working together to enervate the government in regards to the regulations that affect them. And the fact that you don't see them doing this should be evidence for the fact that it's not workable." What do you say to that?

    2. CMCharles Murray1:32:23

       Well, the big corporations don't have much incentive to do it. The big incorporations like the regulatory state, because they, they can afford it, and they have the competitive advantage that I talked about earlier. So, it's... I'll tell you, uh, the kind of place it would work is in the professions, like dentists. Um, by the way, I raised this with my own dentist, and he said, "Yes." (laughs) Uh, the dental, dentists are subject to all kinds of picayune things. My dentist had once been fined because he had inadequately instructed his staff in the use of the fire extinguishers in the office, and he paid a fine because of that. Um, so you have the dental, the dentist's legal fund, and he contributes 100 bucks a year to it. In return for that, there are a set of specified regulations that you can just go ahead and ignore, and we'll defend you if, uh, if the government comes after you on those. E- each individual dentist's office would have a lot of incentive to, uh, to be part of that. The same could go for physicians, uh, other small companies. Uh, there could be lots of different organizational groups that would have an interest in combining, because together, they could pose a, uh, response to the government that no individual dentist could.

    3. DPDwarkesh Patel1:33:46

       Yeah, and the added benefit there would be that there would be a number figure on the cost of regulation a dentist. If, if a dentist is willing to contribute $100 a year, then, you know, you can say that this is actually the cost of the regulation you're imposing on dentists' offices, if they're willing to pay that, yeah. Um, but,

23. 1:34:05 – 1:37:00

    Getting around the Halo effect

    1. DPDwarkesh Patel1:34:05

       uh, uh, so here are some other issues that somebody might bring up with this scheme. You say in the book that regulations that have a halo effect should be avoided, because even though they might be insensible, uh, you're not going to get much more than the people to back that cause. Aren't most regulations probably ones that have a halo effect behind them?

    2. CMCharles Murray1:34:24

       By halo effect, I mean, uh, it's the reg- the purpose of the regulation is to protect the environment or an endangered species. Uh, it's very hard to get... Y- y- if you, if you are resisting regulations, uh, that people say will create dirty air, if you resist those regulations, it's going to be a public relations disaster. You'd be amazed how many don't have that halo effect. Um, I give some examples in the book, uh, about, uh, getting fined for not having a sign saying "poison" on a storage place of beach sand, and the reason is, this is a brick-making factory that in some conditions, under some grinding operations, beach sand can produce a... now you can't remember, a respiratory problem. So, you're supposed to label the, the room in which the beach sand is being kept with "poison." You know, that kind of... You have no idea, if you have not been directly involved in this, how picayune so many of these regulations are, and they don't have a, uh, halo effect. They cannot stand the light of day.

    3. DPDwarkesh Patel1:35:38

       Hmm. I'm glad I went to computer science. I don't have to deal with the, uh... (laughs)

    4. CMCharles Murray1:35:42

       Oh, you're in one of, you're in one of the areas which has the least regulation of anybody.

    5. DPDwarkesh Patel1:35:47

       Yeah, and not if, uh, not if Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson have something to say about it. (laughs)

    6. CMCharles Murray1:35:51

       Yeah.

    7. DPDwarkesh Patel1:35:52

       Um, yeah, uh, but so then this brings out the question, if this method works, why hasn't the Madison Fund taken off? Why haven't these defense funds taken off?

    8. CMCharles Murray1:36:03

       Um, first place, the answer I gave you before.

    9. DPDwarkesh Patel1:36:07

       Mm-hmm.

    10. CMCharles Murray1:36:08

        Donald Trump came along a few months after the book came out. Now, even if Donald Trump hadn't come along, the fact is not that many people read books like that. You would have to have a couple of people who read the book that have big bucks and would start a trial fund all by- all on their own. Actually, if you had one guy, I mean, suppose that a Jeff Bezos decided this, this was, uh, something to try, you have a variety of people in this country who are so wealthy, they can undertake significant, uh, innovations like this all on their own. They don't have to get a bunch of other donors. But it would have to be that kind of effect, I think. Um, has to be somebody else who, who is as crazy about the idea as I am, uh, but who has lots more money than I have.

24. 1:37:00 – 1:41:00

    Future of liberty

    1. CMCharles Murray1:37:00

Episode duration: 1:52:18